Charisma
by FantiSci
Summary: BM. Cheetor's found out the hard way that charisma isn't all about a winning smile and charming personality...it's usually a little darker than that. Fifth in a series.


**_Charisma_**

****

"**_Charisma [kar-_****rizz-ma] _n a person's power to attract or influence people"_**

See that up there? That's what I need now.

Sorry about knocking you over, by the way. My fault, you didn't expect to be mown over by a high speed feline. It's just that some days you want to run as fast as you can, hoping that if you run fast and far enough, you'll find what you're looking for...or you'll escape what you're running from.

Doesn't work, of course...up we go. There. Sorry again.

Huh? Oh, I'm Cheetor - pleased to meet you. You headed to the citadel too? Mind if I walk you?

...What am I running from? Erm, long story...

It's a pain in the neck being the kid. Least, that's what I always thought. No-one lets you out of their sight, you're not trusted with any of the big, dangerous missions, everyone expects you to screw up. You're longing for the day you can grow up and show them all. Make the people that count proud.

Of course, you have no idea how to do this. When it happens, you probably won't notice it...until you realise that all hell breaks lose when you make a mistake, that no-one's watching your back with affectionate disrespect, that suddenly you're all alone. There's no coming of age ceremony, and there's no medals for surviving this long. You expect so much when you grow up, and all you get are responsibilities that you don't want.

The really annoying thing, of course, is that those boring old slagheaps who drone "You don't know how lucky you are, being an adult's no fun, these are the best days of your life..." and so on...They're right. That annoys the heck out of me. Especially since one of the main 'bots who did that was my least favourite academy teacher, she had it on for me, I tell ya...

Anyway, I went from being the brat, to being the second in command (gulp), to being the leader-by-default (double gulp).

Why me? I mean,  Botanica was captain of her own team for ages, Rattrap's the oldest, Blackarachnia's probably the most streetwise, Silverbolt's irritating enough to whine the opponent to death - er, sorry. I never got along terrifically well with Silverbolt. The only one _less suited to being the leader than me is Nightscream, and he can at least convince you for all of five seconds that he knows what he's talking about._

Me...I run fast. Big whoop.

Rattrap and Botanica keep telling me that the fact I'm doubting myself means I'm growing up. That doesn't really make much sense to me. How are you supposed to convince other people you can be trusted when you don't trust yourself? Everyone says "oh, Optimus felt like that at times too, and he always managed to do the right thing..." but he _didn't! _

I adored Optimus. He was like a father to me...even more so than my biological one, too busy going off on military missions to even drop in and say "hi." I looked up to him. I thought he could do no wrong. Now - I still wish I could be like him, but he wasn't perfect. He almost got us killed on more than one occassion. It was a revelation to me, that what Optimus said wasn't infallible. Like a kid realizing his parents can't wave a magic wand and make all the bad things disappear.

He was doing his best, I know. He had tough calls to make, he couldn't HELP getting some of it wrong. But I still have nightmares about my entire body cold as it turns into pure metal...and my mind shutting down as I'm forcibly turned into an automaton, that horrible need to scream and it dies in your throat, struggling, suffocating...and Optimus, my hero, my father-figure, not caring, just yelling "If this is the will of the Matrix, then so be it!"

Bloody PLANTS were more important to him than we were. Than I was.

Yeah, yeah...the Oracle had screwed with his head (what is WITH that thing anyway? It's begun to speak to me, which is _really worrying...), he probably wasn't at his best, he was exhausted, he probably physically couldn't do anything, any one of a thousand excuses - but in the end, me, Legs, Ratface and the kid were gonna die, and he was going to let it go as part of some great master plan. Maybe it was, I dunno. Still hurt like hell to know that._

I don't have Optimus's conviction. I don't really care what Primus or the Matrix or the Oracle or some other divine entity who wants something done but has slag-all to do with the suffering needed to do it, I don't _care what they want. What have they ever done for us? I care about my life, my friends' lives, my home. Me and mine. _

Yeah, it's selfish, but it's the truth. I don't lie to myself the way Silverbolt does. There's nothing _wrong with putting yourself first. There's nothing right about it either. It's a survival tactic, not a moral stance. _

I mean, look at the big cats. Male lions kill the cubs of their predecessor when they take over a pride. Do the lionesses protect their kids? No - they want to keep in the male's good books. Bye bye babies. It's not done in malice or spite, it's just the way things are. 

But that's not what Optimus did. I could have understood him if it was - I wouldn't have liked it, but I'd've understood. But throwing away the lives of youself and those as close as family for some mythical loudmouth? Not on. 

And this is the guy who's a _better leader than I am. This is the person I aspire to be. And he screwed up big time. I'm the tawny cat with all the brains of an amoeba - if his mistakes were so disasterous, what will mine be like?_

Mind you, I'm probably not going to get the chance to screw  anything up big time. The Maximal Elders are a little embarassed about...well, about being about as effective as an ashtray on a motorbike, really. They're downplaying our role in all of this. Not only that but they're making snide little comments at these meetings - y'know, not enough to sue for, but kinda "Well, we COULDA done it ourselves if we'd WANTED to..." even to the point they insinuate we were in some way to blame for Megatron's reign.

A little on the rude side, don't you think? Who tried to cover up Megatron's escape so that by the time they'd actually got the fleet together, it was only a little-known exploration vessel that was in range to tackle the ship? Who created X? Who never answered our transmissions for help?

Either way, they're scared of giving us any real responsibility. Scared we'll let something slip, or show them up. Depressing as it is...I can see me, Legs (if she ever comes back...Silverbolt, you _slagheap!), RT, Silverbolt and the kid shuffling paper for the next couple of decades so that we don't blow their cover. Botanica'll be all right, she lies low in that science centre of hers. Council barely know she's there._

"If there's one universal truth, it's that "honest politician" is an oxymoron." Blackarachnia told me that once...but, er, what's an oxymoron?

...

Oh, right, thanks. I get it now.

I suppose I really should pay attention to what our dear rulers are up to, but I honestly can't be bothered. Like I said, me and mine. They stay out of the way of my team, my friends, they can do whatever the Pit they want. But they've been messing Nightscream around something awful, want to turn him into one of their cannon fodder soldiers with no will of their own. They don't like his independence, but he's a soft target because he's so young...it's only my status protecting me from the same harassment.

And they wonder where all the heroes have gone.

Hah, like we need the council screwing us up. I thought we were doing that pretty well ourselves. Nightscream's gone walkabout, Rattrap and Botanica can't look each other in the eye (why, I don't know), I'm dithering like a lunatic and then there's the whole Blackarachnia-Silverbolt thing that's been giving us _all heart failure. _

WHY can't Silverbolt keep his problems to himself? It's not our fault his head's messed up. Blackarachnia would be be better off ditching him. Give us all peace.

It's hard leading a group you adore and hate all at the same time. I'd never let anything happen to them, but by Primus I want to knock their heads together at times, or just make them SHUT UP.

Did Optimus ever feel this way about us? Dinobots and Rattrap's bickering annoyed him, sure, but it's nothing compared to the whining _I have to put up with. He made a kinda half-hearted effort to stop the "blossoming romance" between our then-Romeo and (rather violent) Juliet, but he didn't seem to mind when Legs joined the Maximal side. And I know he let me away with blue murder._

So what am I supposed to do? Keep quiet and let things work themselves out? Or do I try to intervene, try to sort everything out for everyone?

Up until now I've been keeping out of everyone's way. You could say it was because of my "kid" mentality - you know, the rookie always knows that when something big's going on, the best course of action is to stay well clear. But...that'd be a lie. The pure and simple truth - and think badly of me if you must, because it _is the truth - is that I just couldn't be bothered. _

Yeah, me. The one waxing lyrical about how irresponsible the Elders were. I don't want to get involved. I tell myself that if I get in the middle of things, I'll end up taking sides even if I don't want to. I'm _not a diplomat. I choose a cause and I'll fight for it, compromise isn't really an option. If it comes between Nightscream and the Elders, I'll back the bat all the way to the high courts, that is one issue I __will not let go. It's cut and dried. The Coucil are trying to screw up Nightscream's life and they've got no right to do that. But the things within the group...Rattrap and Botanica, Silverbolt and Blackarachnia, how we all feel about Optimus's death, what we feel about our own circumstances...they need a mediator, not a soldier. If someone "wins," that means something's wrong. There are no right answers._

I don't _like that. Besides anything else, what's it got to do with me? **I didn't get them into these fixes. How should I know how to sort them out? What do they want from me?**_

They need someone with charisma, someone who can tell them "Right, this is what we do, and it'll work." Someone who can make them believe that even though it's wrong. Because when push comes to shove, leading's all about deception. Soldiers would refuse to go to war if they were able to see the "enemy" as people, so their leaders make the opposing side out to be some kind of dark monster out to destroy the forces of good. They'll de-personify entire groups so the military won't feel bad about wiping them out. And the chances are, the people they're killing are just like them, with similiar families and values. Sure there's the case where what they're dealing with is pure evil, but it's not usually the evil people who get slaughtered - it's their unfortunate populace. Like I said - survival rules. Comes down to them or us dying, it's got to be them. 

And leading's about convincing people that something's worth dying for, so that even when you're lying with your systems on the verge of shutdown, you don't doubt for a minute that it was worth it, that in no way was your superior wrong.

I can't do that. If Optimus had died earlier in the war, there's no way in the Pit I'd've been able to say "Okay guys, we're all gonna get killed, but it'll be worth it because of all these stupid vines." Maybe it would have been all right if I was talking to strangers, if it didn't matter to me who lived and who died, but these are my friends. All of them would die for me, and I'd die for any one of them. That's a strength as a person, and a weakness as a military leader.  To a commander, a few deaths are just a few gaps in the ranks, a couple of statistics on a sheet of paper. To me, it means losing the joker of the group, or the kid, or the resident femme fatale. 

The fact that I dare doubt my "superiors' " motives immediately renders me unfit to lead. And it's not like I _want to doubt them. Life was so much easier when the Preds were the bad guys and the Maximals were the forces of good. Keeps it simple. The Vehicons were easier still, with most of them being only drones. And the generals (at last count, one dead, one reverted and whining constantly, one trying to sort out a few structural problems and two out in space somewhere) were corrupted sparks, so it was easy for us to think of them as just "dark sides" with no redeeming features._

But now? Being able to stand still a minute and think over it, I think "yeah, they were people." I feel sorry for Waspinator, when at the time we just laughed as we blew him to pieces. I think over Jetstorm and Thrust's friendship and can see the parallel with Rattrap and Dinobot. And I wonder if Megatron was truly evil, or mentally insane, or, in that quiet, suspicious part of me that sneers at the elders and whispers anarchy...I wonder if he was so very different from me...

All the wondering doesn't do me any good. It's _over. I did what I did and it's set in stone._

Anyway...we better get moving, those stupid elders'll have our hides if we're late.

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**_Author's Note:_**

_I'm not a Cheetor fan, and it probably shows. I've tried to keep the fic as non-spiteful as I can, but in the end there was something about Cheetor that struck me as a little selfish. He dithers between being incredibly mature and unbelievably childish in the show. With Optimus gone, and Cheetor taking over, I'd envision him as fairly undiplomatic - I mean, who in their right mind would want to take charge of a group with enough personal problems to fill an Eastenders storyline?_

_He may be heroic and self-sacrificing, but I don't think he'd miss the opportunity to have a brief grumble in a friendly ear._


End file.
